Campaign to recruit 4,000 new magistrates launches

MA lends support to the timely initiative

24 January 2022

The government has today launched a recruitment campaign to hire 4,000 new and diverse magistrates. The MA welcomes this effort, which should render the magistracy more representative of the communities it serves and reduce COVID-related backlogs.

Blog post: Magistrates hear 90% of criminal cases, slashing their resources will not help reduce the backlog

A response to Transform Justice

29 November 2021

Transform Justice recently suggested reorienting existing resources from the magistrates’ courts to the Crown Court. The call to reorient resources would undermine work of the magistrates’ courts which has successfully worked to reduce the backlog in the magistrates' courts.

MA calls for changes to reduce impact of crown court backlogs on cases involving violence against women and girls

MA national chair calls for implementation of changes to magistrates' jurisdiction, to ease the burden on crown courts

08 October 2021

The MA national chair, Bev Higgs, has written to The Guardian newspaper calling for magistrates' jursidiction to be increased to a 12-month custodial sentence for a single offence to help reduce the backlog of cases in the crown courts and thus speed up the process of justice.